I remember Christmas as a boy in the deep, dark woods on my Grandparent's farm. I can remember the routine of tending to the cows being interrupted by a trip into the woods to cut a tree and decorating it and trips to the attic for Christmas paraphernalia. My Grandparents had amassed the most marvelous train set. 75 different cars. Two engines, a coal and a diesel locomotive. Two transformers and hundreds of pieces of track, trestles, tunnels and accessories. About once a year we would take it down and play with it on a few idle summer days as well.
For some reason those Christmases were always white. The house was always filled with those who could make the trip that particular year. Bustle and baking, comfort and cooking. Gossip and wrapping paper. Scenes that Norman Rockwell had in mind for us all which were repeated across the country. Warmth and cheer, all cast in the softened colors of memory. A whiff of coal smoke takes me back 60 years and longer.
My Grandparents had eight children. By the time I happened along those children had all become adults well on their various ways in life. I noticed a few things about that that I have always tried to remember. Instead of having children my Grandparents had a wide circle of adult friends and they treated them exactly that way. It was a good example and it showed me that I would know my children far longer as adults rather than kids. With my own kids I always tried to think of the adults I would like to know and I always tried to imagine the qualities in those adults I would like to see.
That eventually got me to thinking about friendship and loved ones. I've noticed that my friends do treat me with affection and toleration just as we all do. Friends will seek and value my advice and even take it from time to time without criticism or condemnation. Friends will ask for or offer assistance without reservation or resentment. They will freely offer advice and be critical without reservation, condescension or self-consciousness. These seem to be hallmarks of true affection.
On the other hand, loving a person seems to be a terrible thing to do to them. It seems to open the door to all kinds of negative features of human relations. I've always tried to treat loved ones as though I just really, really liked them. To the point my wife knows that my saying ' I really like you' is high praise indeed.
I really like Christmas Eves and remember them in great detail. Christmas Day, not so much. They always seem like a sort of anti-climax. I will say, in all this time, there has never been a Christmas day I would call bad just less memorable than the evening before, somehow less special. I dunno. How do you rank something like that? You don't. You shouldn't. You can't.
I really like Christmas Eve and I proved it by getting married on that evening years ago. Our joke was it was either very romantic or we had just ruined a perfectly good holiday. I guess the jury is still out on that. It's been a pretty good quarter century of Holidays.
One more thing: Tinsel, no more than four strands at a time and no throwing.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you really, really like your Holidays.
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